hiking

Tour de France on foot

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We just spent a few glorious weeks in France. We started and ended in Bordeaux, where we saw a rainbow and I tried escargot for the first time. Not bad. For the next two weeks, I ate so much duck, I may start quacking.

During the first week, we hiked through the rural Dordogne hilltops. Our walk began in the village of Meyssac, where we walked a roundabout loop in the hills, in the pouring rain, to the adjacent town of Colognes au Rouge.

Many of the towns we visited were considered “Les plus beaux villages de France”. The most beautiful French villages, which is an official status. It is a tourism scheme to attract visitors to what are some of the most beautiful villages I have ever seen. Some seem real. Others, not so much, more like Disneyland, according to my partner in crime, Tim. To qualify, towns must be rural, with less than 2000 inhabitants, have at least two historic sites, and agree to some marketing terms.

The buildings in the the Colognes au Rouge, are red, just like the name implies; built from the local red sandstone. We walked through an apple orchard, to get to it, which provided a tasty snack.

The fuzzy image is because we used a high tech baggie to keep the camera, which was also our GPS, dry. Remarkably, this was our only day it rained steadily our whole trip.

We were looking forward to lots of baguettes and pastries, but didn’t expect to find them Automat style, in a vending machine. We passed.

This was not the only food we found in vending machines. A few towns sold pizza this way. Again we passed.

Next we had a whirlwind ride to another Plus Beau Village, Curemont. We spent an hour walking around the town, where it seemed more inhabited and real. Then we headed off to Beaulieu sur Dordogne, beautiful place on the Dordogne River.

We followed a cattle drive for a small portion of our walk.

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We arrived at the village from an old cobble path in the woods. I imagined a cobblestone street but it was now merely a rocky path.

We were excited to see there was a municipal pool along the river, but when we got there, we found it closed. C’est la vie. The river was lovely, people were fly fishing and we watched a swarm of something for a while. Made me think of home and hope that my bees did not swarm while we travelled.

Then we were off to Carennac, we walked through walnut and plum orchards on the way. Good snacking.

This was another beautiful village which felt lived in, there was an art exhibit, a lovely church and bridges over the town and river.

After a swim in the pool and a relaxing evening, we headed out to our final walking destination, Loubressac. It took us a while to adjust to store and restaurant hours in France and we had a few walks without lunch because we would arrive in a village at just the wrong time.

Tim was so dismayed when we found a 1950’s style expensive tourist trap for lunch, it brought a tear to his eyes. I didn’t care, I wasn’t missing another lunch on a long walk!

Loubressac may have been my favorite stop on the walk. It was a bustling old village. School was in session. In session may be used loosely. There is either no school or only half a day on Wednesdays and the kids always seemed to be in recess. I read that the cafeteria serves a three course hot lunch, just like many of the restaurants.

It was here Tim became a little obsessed with the architecture of rural french toilettes.

You can see why. It was also here we started to notice how people travel and transport their pets. We were in a 3 star hotel and each night a couple would walk in with their two dogs, armed also with dog beds and proceed to set them up for dinner, complete with scraps from the table. And they barked! We saw pets pushed in strollers, pulled behind bikes in crates and worn like backpacks. Hmmm.

I was drawn to this house because it looked like a face and then I saw the basketball hoop. While we were away, my bird camera caught subtle northern lights in the Adirondacks.

Subtle, but I confirmed it was pitch black on other nights at this time. We’re further south in France at 40 degrees latitude and haven’t been in the path of the light display.

All told we hiked about 44 miles through the hilltop villages of the Dordogne and a good time was had by all. Our bags were transferred every day and we only had to carry a day pack. The only way I will go these days. Then we had another whirlwind transfer from Loubressac to Souillac, where we picked up bikes and headed off for the next part of our adventure.

I’ll score this the way I do my golf game, which includes strokes, lost balls and broken tees. Mileage covered:45; injuries: none; lost items: 1 bra left draped over a lamp (merely to dry, not for ambience). Overall a great trip.

A walk around the block

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We effectively took a walk in our “neighborhood”, around Lumpy Ridge. Lumpy Ridge is a massive granite rock outcropping that’s been sculpted by wind and erosion over the last 1.8 billion years. It features many named rock formations, my favorite is Twin Owls. Once you see it, you can’t miss it.

Twin Owls

These are popular rock climbing destinations after the Peregrine Falcons finish roosting.

I’m always pretty happy at the beginning of a hike.

Happy hikers

We were prepared for winter hiking conditions, especially after our earlier, exhausting, post-holing experience.

So of course, we didn’t need our snow shoes. It’s like carrying an umbrella, forget it and it’s sure to rain.

The views of the Continental divide were stunning. We climbed for the first 4 miles then it was all downhill after that. We ran into slushy snow on the back side of the ridge along the Dark Mountain trail. Microspikes were all we needed.

We picked a gorgeous day for it. This is an outbuilding on our neighbor, MacGregor’s Ranch, which transferred 1200 acres of lands for conservation to the NPS.

I decided to name a few of the formations myself.

I would call this Twin Chickens
Chicken hat on a post
Angry man and family
Toucan with a hat
First sign of spring on Cow Creek Trail
Home stretch

Luckily for me, we were able to use two vehicles and did not need to complete the loop, which would have added additional elevation.

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, the big boys came to visit.

It was a nice change from the turkeys.

A good time was had by all!

A post holer’s perspective

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That’s the imprint of my right hand during one of several post hole topples. I didn’t catch the two that left me lying in the snow. All was well at starting elevation, 50’s and dry trail, so we left our snowshoes in the car. Back home in the Adirondacks it’s a requirement. Here it’s just bad form.

We hiked along the Wind River, where there was enough blowdown to earn its name. Our next hike will have even less traffic so we’ll definitely bring our snowshoes.

Grumpy Rock

I can always see something in the rock formations.

Sad-faced rock

When we rounded the bend, the views dazzled.

Another great walk in the Park.

Slow and steady

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We had quite the outing planned today. We boarded an early bus to St. Guilhem le Desert to hike. I saw this snail at the bus stop and took it as a sign to go slow and steady.

St. Guilhem may be one of the prettiest cities in France. It has an Abbey from the 7th century with, reportedly, a relic from Christ’s cross.

The Abbey is surrounded by stunning cliffs. On the way to our walk I heard a swarm of bees in a tree. They were gone by the time we finished.

The path joined one of the pilgrim paths to Compostello. We even saw a couple of pilgrims busking in the square with a donkey! We walked up the river valley and around the back of a gigantic rock formation.

I recalled from our last trip a bridge, which I thought harked back centuries. Tim poo pooed me until we came upon the bridge.

The path was well maintained and made it easy to rise above the valley.

We were surprised to come upon burnt forest and learned there was a fire in April.

My phone kept track of our progress. Slow and steady. We missed our bus home so we finished the hike with lunch in the swuare by the Abbey under the 150 year old Plane tree.

Then we hitchhiked home and were picked up by a lovely couple who only spoke french and I was delighted I was able to make small talk, even if I had to repeat myself a couple of times.

Loving home

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Friends came to town and we spent the week exploring the Adirondacks with them. I always wonder why we travel so much when we love where we live. Ah well, the adventurer in us all.

We hiked long and short hikes, up mountains, around lakes and through some mud. The views make it all worthwhile.

view from Nun-Da-Ga-O ridge

I spend a lot of time looking down, watching my feet and there is a lot to see there as well. It has been a wet summer and mushrooms flourished.

Back on the home front, I was hopeful I would get to see a monarch chrysalis. Our yard is covered in milkweed. We saw a few caterpillars sampling the leaves but none hung around for us to watch.

But as the DH always says, “There is no such thing as paradise”. Despite the pandemic and uptick in cases, a local music festival brought lots of visitors to town; we got out of dodge and headed to the Great Camp Sagamore.

It is situated on its own lake, which unfortunately was only about 62 degrees f. We chose to swim anyway, Tim with a wetsuit, me, without. I figured I had about 30 minutes until hypothermia set in. I swam close to shore just in case and was fine, but slow for my swim. As soon as I was finished, I got out of my bathing suit and put on wool leggings, a wool shirt, cashmere sweater and fleece. It wasn’t enough. I was shaking so hard, I couldn’t bring my lunch to my mouth. I headed for the shower instead and a ten minute steamy shower did the trick.

I came out of the shower to find this creature on our bed. I walked around it and didn’t see it doing much, then I wriggled the blanket, nothing. Jokester DH had found a fishing lure and thought it would be a nice surprise for me.

We returned home to our peaceful cabin. Now it’s my turn to make sure the bees are fed for the winter. There was not enough honey for me to take another harvest so I put the boxes with partially filled honey frames below the larger brood boxes. I think they will clean them out and move the honey up to the brood boxes over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I am also feeding them sugar syrup. So far I have given them 30 pounds of sugar in a syrup mixture and more to come.

Wildcamera

I’ll weigh the hives in a few weeks to make sure they have enough food to last the winter.

In the meantime, I will enjoy the view from home.

a day like any other

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So true, If my kids ask me what I did, I can’t distinguish one day from another. Got up, ate a little, surfed too much, saw nature, created something, made dinner, went to bed, repeat. The high points of course are seeing nature and creating and I have had plenty of time to do both here.

Spring in Maine, cold, wind and fog with a day or two of sunshine to entice. We’ve enjoyed walking the local trails on Schoodic peninsula again, right out our front door.

I have a renewed interest in geology. The formations on the point give some insight as to how the earth and its shoreline was formed.

These veins of black magna rose from the center of the earth and filled faults in the granite.

When the Navy was here, they installed a fence, right into the water line, along this fault to protect their secret operations at Schoodic Point. I only just noticed that RD left their mark too!

And I sat on a wet rock and left my mark as well.

I choose to avoid the rocks covered in wet seaweed. I have been eating seaweed in various forms though. Dulse last night, some sort of fried, very salty “sea vegetable”.

While Tim enjoyed getting close to the breaking waves.

We’ve seen the first couple of boats working the waters.

When we can see through the fog.

I cook and cook…

And create…

Just another day in the life.

Ins and outs, ups and downs

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I asked my grandson to draw me a maze. Oh ye of little faith. Needless to say I cracked the code.

My bees go in and out of their hive through a 1 inch entrance. The small opening helps them maintain the hive temperature in the 90’s. Looks like there will be a line to get in later.

Tim invited me to join him on a camping trip in the mountains. Weather forecast was favorable (and he couldn’t find anyone else to join him) so I said why not.

The weather was perfect. We had a leisurely hike in to our campsite. I stopped and smelled the roses, or all the funghi at work in the damp woods.

The next day we planned to bushwhack (bushbash in AU) up a small mountain with beautiful views of the High Peaks.

Anyone remember Gilligan Island’s “three hour tour”? It began with me belly flopping on a stream crossing. I cried “ girl down” but no real harm was done.

Then came the uphill bushbash. Our little hike lasted 9 hours! I was poked, scratched and snagged and my sweater was in tatters by the end of the day. The views were quite nice though for the few moments we enjoyed it.

We slept well that night. The next morning we got our creaky bones moving and hiked up to a place called Summit Rock with a nice ledge to rest after scrambling over and between boulders, some as large as a car.

We saw two sets of rock climbers dangling from these cliffs.

Then we returned to our campsite, had a cup of coffee and hiked out just before dark. We covered 22 miles and I have the battle scars to show for it.

And here is my view sitting in the comfort of my living room chair at home.

Gotta go up and down, in and out for the fun of it.

Pack light

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Since there were many heavy, non-negotiable items to carry, I saved weight by bringing few clothes and never smelled too bad.

I brought 2 t-shirts, 4 pairs of underwear, and washed one out every day; lots of wool: leggings, 2 long sleeve shirts, sweater, 1 pair of hiking pants, hand knit hat, 4 pair of hand knit socks, a lace shawl, gloves, down sweater,  waterproof shell, hiking boots, and a pair of crocs for camp. I wore every item more than once since it was November and temperature dropped to the low 40’s at night. I used a camelback for the first time and was very happy with it. 

Here is a tableau of my hand knit socks. The blue patterned socks were knit specifically for hiking and are made out of heavier yarn than I usually use. I used one pair as a pad under my shoulder straps.

My feet remained pretty happy. They really hurt on days we had heavy loads – water, all our food – and walked longer distances. A little lambs wool tucked into my socks usually did the trick.

We had long and short days. Here is our itinerary and National Park Service information. We needed backcountry permits for all our campsites.

  • South Kaibab to Indian Garden: 8+ miles, fully laden with 6 days of food, ouch, descent 3500 feet
  • Indian Garden to Salt Creek: 7+ miles still with lots of food and 6 liters of water.
  • Salt Creek to Monument Creek: 3+ miles, starting to feel good and little elevation change
  • Monument Creek to Hermit Creek: 3+ miles, rocking it except for dreading the hike out, which is getting closer and closer
  • Hermit Creek to Hermit Rapids and back: 5 miles, with NO PACK!
  • Hermit Creek to South Rim: Light pack, especially since I gave everything to Tim, 7+ miles and 3500 feet elevation gain.

I wore a hand knit lace shawl I had just finished around the camp, always stylish. It’s the forest path stole and was fun to knit. Made of silk, linen and cashmere, it’s as light as a feather and warm as toast.

I started knitting a lace shawl from the same yarn on the plane to Phoenix, which kept me occupied until I went to bed at 7:30 most night. 26 repeats, about 2 yards long. I’ll pick it up again after my Christmas knitting and weaving is finished.

Wedding shawl “Cecilia” border
A last look at Hermit Creek campsites, note the blue tent

Here’s a 360 degree view of our campsite at Salt Creek.The image works best on an iPhone because you can move the phone around and see it all.

We missed the Canyon on our flight out, but saw a beautiful sunset. It already seems like a dream.
 

Rocks and river

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First of all, I’m a total weenie. I just read that a 37 year old Swedish woman broke the woman’s record for running South Rim to North Rim and back up to the South Rim again, or R2R2R, in 7+ hours!!! Hours!!! That’s 42 miles and over 11,000 feet of climbing up and 11,000 feet of climbing down! What?!

I did mention to a runner we passed, while I now realize I was crawling out of the canyon, “you must be crazy running in the Canyon” and he said, “you must be crazy carrying that pack”. To each his own.

But we did make it down to the Colorado River one day and it was fabulous. The hike into the inner Canyon, where the Vishnu schist rock layers are over 1.4 billion years old, was quite beautiful. We were walking into the deeper layers of the earth. There were lots of stream crossings over Hermit Creek to get to the rapids. The dam upriver had just released water and the river was really running.

Our first glimpse of the Colorado River along the Tonto Trail walking to Monument Creek
Descending into another era of rock layers

Hard to believe it was the river that carved the canyon.

But back to those dang rocks and rock slides. I had been dreading the new rock slides on the Hermit Trail from day one of our hike. I’m such a chicken.

They appeared scarier than they actually were.

Rock slide Hermit Trail

Most had been somewhat cleared. I was certainly happier walking up rather than down. They didn’t slow the runners that passed us on the way down.

This one was pretty new; it broke and tree and a rock.

I’m just glad it never rained or created new slides. I always wonder about the choice of words on road signs. Do I feel safer with fallen rocks or falling rocks? Actually neither.

So in the end, it took me 8 hours to hike out, which is mildly demoralizing after reading about the super runner. But I did it and there were no tears.

Flora and fauna we did and didn’t see

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First, happily what we did not see: scorpions or Grand Canyon rattlesnakes. These sort of creatures are one of the reasons I can’t sleep “hard”, under the stars in only my sleeping bag.  I need the false security of my flimsy nylon tent zipped up around me. We also missed a 12 point mule deer buck, which apparently wandered through our campsite one night while we were still awake. Ah well.

We did see one when we hiked out.

Mule deer, Hermit Trail

This mule deer wasn’t so lucky but check out the beautiful sutures in its skull.

On our way down the South Kaibab trail, Tim spotted this tarantula; harmless but not so cute.

Tarantula South Kaibab

One day as I was seeing double, this rock looked like a stern man to me. Stern as in not happy, not a lobsterman’s crew.

We saw interesting lichen on our hike out. Anything to pause and take a photo.

We picked up a few cactus spines along the way and were thankful for our long pants. A few were in bloom and sometimes along the trail we would see the most delicate and colorful flowers.

I realize now, we saw yucca plants in many forms. Their roots are cassava and have lots of carbs and anti-inflammatory properties. That would have been good to know.

We saw these tadpoles in our drinking water. What were they doing there? The backstroke!  Hehe. Never fear, our industrial strength water filter got rid of whatever they may have deposited and the water tasted much better than the Phoenix city water.

Cottonwoods at the Indian Garden oasis

And this is what we saw when we returned home. Our Christmas Cactus in full bloom and our adorable feline, Elli… and ten inches of snow on the ground. But that’s another story.